MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => Selling Stock Direct => Topic started by: TheSmilingAssassin on August 02, 2011, 20:49
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I'm using Photoshelter and like it. They've been improving it continually and it's pretty nice.
Sales are slow but promising. I've only had a few dozen images online and it's more than paid for itself with some print and stock sales.
I think if I had a few thousand images online I'd see some regular sales. I'm actually giving the agencies a break for a bit while I build up my personal site.
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Have you read this discussion? It might address some of your questions -
http://www.microstockgroup.com/selling-direct/places-and-ways-to-sell-your-images-direct/ (http://www.microstockgroup.com/selling-direct/places-and-ways-to-sell-your-images-direct/)
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I do plan to get my own site one day but I never seem to get any time to work on it. I'm also waiting for someone to come up with better ways for us to get together and sell direct to buyers. What I want is for us all to have separate sites but be able to put images in to combined collections that will be more interesting to buyers than individual portfolios. I would also like to see a way for buyers to only have to register once and be able to buy images from different portfolios. I don't think my portfolio on its own is going to make many people sign up and download and it would probably be a waste of money to market it.
I thought that this would all be available by now but all the entrepreneurs seem fixated by the way the big sites have set things up. Hopefully someone will take a risk and set up an alternative.
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Unfortunately 80% wasn't enough for istock, they now take 83% off me. Hopefully part of their downturn is due to their greed and other sites wont follow them. If someone comes up with a better option to buy and sell stock images than we currently have, I don't think they will have to spend a penny on marketing, we will do it all for them via social networking etc.
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I decided to sell through WarmPicture - which isn't really direct, but pretty close.
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I'm only put off by the fact that us all having our own sites with no universal search is going to be difficult for buyers. I think we need to make their life easier, not harder.
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I'm only put off by the fact that us all having our own sites with no universal search is going to be difficult for buyers. I think we need to make their life easier, not harder.
There will be a universal search :)
Right idea to both of you, it will make a big difference and some serious competition to the "big" sites. Instead of a bunch of pebbles being tossed into the ocean...
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I thought of doing it many times, but never took the time and investment. I do have a bit of this in my website, as Shutterpoint has HTML code to embed my galleries into my website, but then my website is not much popular... Other than that I sometimes put links to my images or Zazzle products. But a real store, not yet.
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I have my own site (which you were kind enough to take a look at :) ). So far only a couple of sales. I haven't gotten around to marketing yet, though, so I wasn't really expecting much in the way of sales. Still nice to have it. Feels a bit like an insurance policy.
I am on Warmpicture too, and feel really positive about that. A few sales so far, but Daniel is much more of a go-getter than I am and between him and some of the other inspired people there, I feel confident that some good traffic will eventually be generated.
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I have my own site (which you were kind enough to take a look at :) ). So far only a couple of sales. I haven't gotten around to marketing yet, though, so I wasn't really expecting much in the way of sales. Still nice to have it. Feels a bit like an insurance policy.
I am on Warmpicture too, and feel really positive about that. A few sales so far, but Daniel is much more of a go-getter than I am and between him and some of the other inspired people there, I feel confident that some good traffic will eventually be generated.
+1 Lisa. sold one last week. And I like Dan. I sell 4/5 on my personal site a month. I charge $65.00 for largest size. Don't care how they use it.
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I'm surprised actually, I thought there'd me a lot more already selling direct. When I google, I find heaps of ktools stores so I can chase some of those people and ask if they want to participate... the more we have the better the SEO.
Yeah if you're doing any cross-promotional stuff, definitely shoot me an email. I'd mentioned doing blog interviews as link exchanges in another post, but all I got was crickets. I did one with Arena Creative ( http://www.mystockvectors.com/blog/?p=153 (http://www.mystockvectors.com/blog/?p=153) ), but I'd definitely love to do more. Although, I probably owe Lisa a freebie, since she already has links to my site. Anyway, a blog is a great promotional tool and easy to set up. I can probably help with a walk-through for setup or at least provide some links.
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Hi Paulie, thanks for voting and replying. I'm actually more interested in the ones that sell on their own dot com where they get 100% of their own commissions but it's still interesting to hear from people that are using sites like photoshelter... so I've added a couple more options.
They take 10% but I haven't found a better platform. I've done trials of a lot of sites and Photoshelter gets it. Ktools doesn't even have a trial. Sorry, but I'm not dropping a couple hundred bucks on something to see if I like it or not.
So what are you up to? You thinking about doing a co-op? Or offering SEO services?
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*raises hand*
I'm one of those "No...but I'd like to in the future people"
My biggest thing is trying to get it started. Right now I'm on a free webhost with limited space and only one db unless I upgrade (which I can't afford to do at the moment). I'm not sure how I want to go about setting up a section what to use as far as payment gateways and whatnot. How to handle licensing it's just a lot of things I don't really know about. I did have a zen cart set up a few years ago but found the digital download part of it clunky and obtrusive and I'm not sure they've changed that part to run smoothly. That and it was a pain to set up (couldn't argue with the free price though).
I also thought about trying to make artwork or take photos that aren't stockworthy but more artistic but I started out in stock and can't find my artistic ability at all :P
I know how to layout a website and code just making it where it looks professional enough is throwing me. That and it's pretty scary to boot.
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Cheers Cory, I do a lot of promoting already, so thank you, I'll keep that in mind. Your blog is great, as is your site. I'm a fair way from creating my own store even... it takes longer than they advertise for doesn't it?
"PhotoStore allows you to setup a complete photo selling website on your server or hosting space and in just minutes you can start selling photos on your website."
lol yeah right! How long did it take you guys to set up?
Thanks. Yeah, it takes a while to setup. I think it was several weeks to get everything uploaded. A couple weeks for my initial design and a couple weeks for the redesign. Then, there are the tweaks. ;D
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I'm thinking about it. Maybe through Photoshelters, which seems simpler and less time-consuming than an actual personal website.
One question to those already selling direct: do buyers just search, pay and download (as they should), or do you receive requests for free personal use, discounts, ...? I'd hate to have to deal with such issues.
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Although, I probably owe Lisa a freebie, since she already has links to my site. Anyway, a blog is a great promotional tool and easy to set up. I can probably help with a walk-through for setup or at least provide some links.
You were so helpful when I set up my site, I felt the least I could do was link to you. Besides, I don't do illustrations, so we aren't really in competition with one another :)
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I can't argue with you there, it is a bit daunting. If it's any concellation, I have no experience with php, just a bit of html and css. I covered SQL in uni but I can't remember any of it lol I'm finding that it's not as bad as I thought, just very time consuming working things out. The licencing and the privacy policy etc was the biggest pain in the bum but it was a useful exercise. It wasn't so much painful as it was boring.
I found the whole thing completely overwhelming. I hired someone to help with the customization. Two someones actually. Made a big difference. At the rate I am selling it might take me a decade or so to recover their modest fees ;)
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Although I can do some PHP and CSS in my Wordpress blogs, I would rather have an easier solution. Ktools has many users and seems to be a solid application, but its look and navigation are a bit dull for today's webiste concept. If I had to pick one of these softwares today, I still don't know what I'd pick.
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Anyway, a blog is a great promotional tool and easy to set up. I can probably help with a walk-through for setup or at least provide some links.
Yes, I know I'm quoting myself, but I didn't know if anyone was interested in this. Here's a link to the Wordpress install for anyone that wanted to set up a blog on top of their store:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress (http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress)
There's a lot of text, but it really isn't too bad to do. Even my technically challenged brain was able to figure it out.
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